For years, Radio Frequency (RF) systems have been employed to transfer data between communication devices. For example, an RF transmitter may be employed to transmit data to an RF receiver. The growth of RF technology over the years has resulted in an increased use of the services for which the technology may be employed. For example, wireless services for electronic communication devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and RF Local Area Networks (LANs) have utilized RF technology to provide data communication. Although the growth of RF technology has resulted in significant benefits in the form of increased services in which the technology can be utilized, it has also resulted in a number of significant problems.
For example, as the growth of the above referenced services continues to increase, RF technology will become less viable, as the technology has a limited frequency spectrum which will eventually be depleted. In addition, RF technology is “far-field” and thus susceptible to eavesdropping and other security issues. Fading, antenna orientation problems, unpredictable maximum range, and higher power requirements are also problems experienced using RF technology.
As an alternative to employing RF technology to transmit and receive data amongst devices, magnetic induction technology may be utilized to transmit and receive the data. Unlike RF technology, magnetic induction technology transmits and receives data by encoding electronic signals into magnetic waves. As magnetic waves typically operate on a much lower frequency than the radio waves utilized in RF-based communication devices such as mobile telephones and ordinary cordless telephones, for example, a minimum amount of interference from other devices is experienced. Operation at a lower frequency also consumes less power than RF technology.
Unfortunately, however, magnetic induction has a significant drawback, that of a limited range of data transmission and reception. For example, the transmission and reception range of systems and networks utilizing magnetic induction is typically no greater than approximately one meter. In addition, in many magnetic induction networks, if the transmitter and receiver antennae are not properly aligned, data transmission can be significantly degraded. As a result of this inability to transmit and receive data over greater distances and the meticulous alignment requirements, conventional magnetic induction data transmission networks are not as effective as they could be.
Therefore, what is needed is a magnetic induction data transmission network including a greater maximum range of data transmission and reception. Such a network should provide more effective and reliable transmission and reception of data between communication devices in the network regardless of the relative position of the communication devices.